Jul 30, 2026 · 18 min · 9 segments
Up The Creek! asks if the demise of Premier Jacinta Allan over corruption allegations means the death of Victoria’s Labor Government, predicts great theatre from an upcoming Royal Commission and…
Mark ForbesHost
Ben HaslamHost
A bit of a shock because it was only a week or two ago that the Labor deputy leader, Ben Carroll, was looking Premier Jacinta Allen in the eye and promising he'd remain loyal for the sake of his young daughter being able to see the first female elected Premier in the state.
Obviously, we've got the stable mate, the Sydney Morning Herald stalemate of the newspaper, and they can take a lot of the agent's copy, and ditto with the Daily Telegraph as well, taking the Herald Sun's copy as well.
It's Australia's second biggest state, and a lot of people up here in New South Wales have been rolling their eyes at parole in Victoria for quite a while now.
Some of the extraordinary corruption that's coming out In the big build down in Victoria, Mark, your former colleague at the age of Nick McKenzie has sort of been the lead on breaking this story.
I mean, why are we interested in this? I mean, really, this is what we'd see as part of an ongoing failure in crisis management here.
The stories have been running for about two years and running hard with revelations almost coming out on a daily or weekly basis.
And it's a real lesson, I think, that Jacinda Allen's had her lines, her defensive lines, which is basically not much to see here.
But let's look at the big picture of the wonderful, you know, rail lines and level crossings and buildings that we've been erecting here in the Big Bill.
They wore thin, particularly when they conflicted with, well, lived experience in the construction industry and what people were reading day after day after day of, you know, millions of dollars going to the pockets of bikey gangs, you know, Mick Gatto, the alleged sort of underworld figurehead, has been a consultant, it seems, to every second building firm in the state and it's really the links between the CFMEU, the main construction union, and the criminal elements that have been the problem and that's a real weak spot.
I mean, it obviously dates back to Dan Andrews' times and it's interesting when I was an editor at the age, you often have these little Friday afternoon drinks with Dan and I remembered asking him about another conflict with another rogue union and a fairly dubious union boss of which he caved in.
uh put it to him i mean all off the record so i can't give names but it's basically his uh his argument was well it's reality they weren't going to lose their leadership my minister had no strategy for actually getting an outcome here we've got to have an outcome yeah we've got to operate on a day-to-day basis but uh but of course mark also i
mean with the with the cfmu i mean well they'll put it they'll place the administration by federal labor and there was actually an inquiry set up ended by jeffrey watson And a lot of these allegations came out in that particular inquiry.
A bit of a shock because it was only a week or two ago that the Labor deputy leader, Ben Carroll, was looking Premier Jacinta Allen in the eye and promising he'd remain loyal for the sake of his young daughter being able to see the first female elected Premier in the state.
Obviously, we've got the stable mate, the Sydney Morning Herald stalemate of the newspaper, and they can take a lot of the agent's copy, and ditto with the Daily Telegraph as well, taking the Herald Sun's copy as well.
It's Australia's second biggest state, and a lot of people up here in New South Wales have been rolling their eyes at parole in Victoria for quite a while now.
Some of the extraordinary corruption that's coming out In the big build down in Victoria, Mark, your former colleague at the age of Nick McKenzie has sort of been the lead on breaking this story.
I mean, why are we interested in this? I mean, really, this is what we'd see as part of an ongoing failure in crisis management here.
The stories have been running for about two years and running hard with revelations almost coming out on a daily or weekly basis.
And it's a real lesson, I think, that Jacinda Allen's had her lines, her defensive lines, which is basically not much to see here.
But let's look at the big picture of the wonderful, you know, rail lines and level crossings and buildings that we've been erecting here in the Big Bill.
They wore thin, particularly when they conflicted with, well, lived experience in the construction industry and what people were reading day after day after day of, you know, millions of dollars going to the pockets of bikey gangs, you know, Mick Gatto, the alleged sort of underworld figurehead, has been a consultant, it seems, to every second building firm in the state and it's really the links between the CFMEU, the main construction union, and the criminal elements that have been the problem and that's a real weak spot.
I mean, it obviously dates back to Dan Andrews' times and it's interesting when I was an editor at the age, you often have these little Friday afternoon drinks with Dan and I remembered asking him about another conflict with another rogue union and a fairly dubious union boss of which he caved in.
uh put it to him i mean all off the record so i can't give names but it's basically his uh his argument was well it's reality they weren't going to lose their leadership my minister had no strategy for actually getting an outcome here we've got to have an outcome yeah we've got to operate on a day-to-day basis but uh but of course mark also i
mean with the with the cfmu i mean well they'll put it they'll place the administration by federal labor and there was actually an inquiry set up ended by jeffrey watson And a lot of these allegations came out in that particular inquiry.
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